overjoy him.

"I don't know why it is," said he, "but Hawkesbury is a fellow I cannot
but mistrust."

"But," said I, "I don't see what there can possibly be to suspect in his
handing over this simple account to me to keep."

"All I can say is," said he, "I wish he hadn't done it. Why didn't he
hand it over to Doubleday?"

"I wondered at that," said I, "but there's no love lost between those
two. Doubleday says he thinks he did it because I am a bit of a fool,
and he wants the pleasure of seeing me in a mess over the account."

Jack laughed.

"Doubleday is always flattering somebody," said he. "Never mind; it may
be only fancy on my part after all."

Jack wanted to get to his books that evening, but I dissuaded him.

"It can do no good," said I, "and it may just muddle you for to-morrow.
Take an easy evening now, and go to bed early. You'll be all the
fresher for it to-morrow."

So, instead of study, we fell-to talking, and somehow got on to the
subject of the home at Packworth.

"By the way, Fred," said Jack, "I got a letter from you the other day."

"From me?" I cried; "I haven't written to you for months."

"It _was_ from you, though, but it had been a good time on the road, for
it was written from Stonebridge House just after I had left."

"What! the letter you never called for at the post-office?"

"The letter you addressed to `J.' instead of `T.' my boy; But I'm glad
to have it now. It is most interesting."

"But however did you come by it?" I asked.

"If you will stop runaway horses when your hands are full you must
expect to lose things. This letter was picked up by Mrs Shield after
that little adventure, and only came to light out of the lining of her
bag last week. She remembered seeing it lying on the road, she says,
and picking it up, along with Mary's shawl and handkerchief, which had
also fallen. But she was too flurried to think anything of it, and
until it mysteriously turned up the other day she had forgotten its
existence. So there's a romantic story belonging to your letter."

I could not be satisfied till the interesting document was produced and
conned over. We laughed a good deal in the reading, over the
reminiscences it brought up, and the change that had come over both our
lives since then.

"Mrs Shield says Mary insisted it belonging to her, and that she had no
right to send it to me," said Jack, laughing. "What do you think of
that?"

"It's very kind of her